Many prior art devices used to achieve various drilling tasks or related activities suffer from significant disadvantages, such as poor stability and/or accuracy, difficulty in handling and operating in confined spaces, poor visibility and other disadvantages. For example, many drilling apparatus have fast moving parts, rotating parts and/or vibrating parts which prevent the drilling apparatus to be secured in a comfortable and fixed position while in use or which significantly impair the visibility and operation of the operable end of the apparatus. Furthermore, several prior art drilling apparatus have little or no depth control or accuracy measures with respect to over-drilling or under-drilling, as the application may tend to require. These problems and shortcomings are even more noticeable when considering prior art drills for use in surgical settings or which otherwise require precision.
In addition to the shortcomings with drilling apparatus, fixation devices can also suffer from various shortcomings. For example, pedicle screws are subject to relatively high failure rates, which is often attributed to a failure of the bone-screw interface. Screws for use in surgical settings may also be limited for use in only certain boney anatomies, or with only certain types of drilling apparatus.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved drilling apparatus that decreases drilling times, enhances depth control, as well as stability and accuracy when performing drilling operations, and which otherwise overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art. In particular, there is a need for a drill apparatus that does not require the user to move the drill body during the drilling operation. There is also a strong need for a drilling device that improves patient safety, in part by reducing the risk of anterior breaches during certain surgical procedures requiring the use of drilling apparatus.
The prior art also fails to teach a system for creating a suite of surgical apparatus based on the data set derived from a patient's MRI or CT scan. For example, the availability of patient-specific data (for example, a vertebral body) may allow a surgeon to accommodate for subtle variations in the position and orientation of a plate, screw, or other bone anchor to avoid particular boney anatomy, or irregularities in the positioning and alignment of the adjoining vertebral bodies. As another example, the use of patient data may also assist a surgeon in selecting a desired trajectory for an implantable device so as to avoid, for example, crossing the pedicle wall and violating the spinal canal during a spine-related procedure. The use of patient-specific data permits the surgeon to avoid these types of mistakes by creating and utilizing customized tools and instruments, which may comprise specific orientation, end-stops/hard stops, or other safety related features to avoid over-torque or over-insertion of an associated device. This data also permits the surgeon to create a patient-contacting surface that is oriented to match one or more of the anatomical features derived from the data set, and thereby quickly and efficiently locate and place devices with corresponding patient-contacting surface(s) in the appropriate location and orientation.
It would therefore be advantageous to provide apparatus suitable for use with a surgical procedure that is adapted and/or configured and/or capable of conforming to a plurality of anatomical features of a particular patient, and/or to one or more additional apparatus to assist the surgeon in completing the surgical procedure(s) safely and efficiently, and that otherwise significantly reduces, if not eliminates, the problems and risks noted above. Other advantages over the prior art will become known upon review of the Summary and Detailed Description and the appended claims.